CHAPTER VIII
PROMOTERS OF CRIME—PEOPLE WHO PLAN ROBBERIES AND ACT AS "BACKERS" FOR PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS; THE EXTRAORDINARY "MOTHER" MANDELBAUM, "QUEEN OF THE THIEVES," AND GRADY, WHO HAD HALF A DOZEN GANGS OF CRACKSMEN WORKING FOR HIM
If there is any one familiar adage that fits every criminal in the underworld it is "Easy come, easy go." Surely there is a curse on stolen money. More than once in my former life I have received $50,000 as my share in a Sunday morning bank burglary—and by the next Saturday night not even a five-dollar bill remained.
Professional thieves are rich one day and poor the next. The fact that more money is always to be had without the hard labor which brings honest reward makes thieves as improvident as children. All thieves are gamblers—scarcely in all my acquaintances can I recall even one exception. Sometimes the entire proceeds of a robbery are lost in a gambling house within twenty-four hours after the crime.
And this is how it has come about that all over the world, in every big city, there are "backers" of thieves; men, and sometimes women, who take the stolen goods off their hands, find hiding places for criminals who are being pursued, advance money to them when they are out of funds, and even pay the expenses of their families when the burglars get into prison.
Some of these friends of thieves are really promoters of criminal enterprises. They name the banks and jewelry shops that are to be robbed and select the residences of wealthy persons that are to be entered. They are like the backers of theatrical enterprises who put up the money for the necessary expenses and advance the salaries of the actors; they are like the promoters in the mining world who pay for the tools, the pack animals, and who "grub-stake" the miners to outfit them on prospecting tours in the mountains.